Liberalism Needs to Start Playing to Win

Liberal-minded folks have failed. We got so obsessed with presiding over the match that we came to see ourselves more as referees than as players on the field.

This article was first published on the 10th July 2026 in the Australian Financial Review. A selection of Josh’s columns will be published here on Substack a few weeks after they appear in print.

Watching the World Cup with my daughter in the pre-dawn glow of the TV, I explained the rules of soccer.

You can’t pick up the ball and run. You move towards the goal incrementally, collaboratively. You can’t hang out at your opponents’ goal line waiting for an easy kick. If the referee makes a bad call, you can’t storm the pitch. Nobody gets a handicap because they’re better, nor a leg up because they’re worse. Everyone is treated the same. May the best team win.

Something stirred inside me. It would be easy, I thought, to ruin the fun of the beautiful game by making a political analogy.

So, here goes.

Progressives folded like tents and took the knee before an illiberal movement that suddenly made your race, gender and sexuality important again. AP

In ways that explain much of what’s going haywire in culture and politics right now, soccer is like liberalism.

Under liberalism, the rules apply to everyone. The ball is your agenda. You kick it forward using rational arguments. You move forward incrementally, collaboratively, even if ramming it through would be quicker. You can’t hang out at the goal line waiting for an easy kick, avoiding the hard work to get there. If the referee makes a bad call, you can’t storm the Capitol building. Nobody gets a handicap because they’re better, nor a leg up because they’re worse. Everyone is treated the same.

There’s just one huge problem.

Nobody watches soccer for the rules. We watch it to see players fighting their guts out to win.